Perhaps the state of the Maltese political landscape can today best be compared to a jigsaw. One of those very difficult jigsaws that you pour over for hours, or that requires a group effort with different people trying to sort out different sections of the jigsaw. A jigsaw which is very difficult to fathom because you have large swathes of only two colours which are increasingly forming one dark shade of purple, and with a populace that cannot or does not want to see enough of a difference between the two.

The main colours in this jigsaw are of course red and blue, and not unsurprisingly there is little green, an accurate tableaux of where we still are as a country, where green politics has still not yet gone mainstream, though there are now a few hints that there really is no alternative. The recent decisions concerning hunting and the no to a golf course in an area of outstanding natural beauty are evidence of this. We now await the same treatment for Ta’ Cenc.

There really is no alternative, not to having a third party in Parliament (though if that happens good luck to us all with a hung Parliament tied to the whims of one individual) but to both parties greening themselves far more substantially than they have to date. It was bad enough experiencing Dom Mintoff playing the lone card until he had finally brought down Dr Sant prematurely, and before the Nationalists had the energy to regroup. I still though do not think that a third party is the right way for us to go, with too much power concentrated in one or two hands.

What we still need is a heavy dose of green in both our main parties. If that does not happen we are likely by default to elect not even a green sadly (and there are plenty of decent, articulate and quietly intelligent ones like Edward Fenech around), but an even more right wing MP in the Josie Muscat mould, who is sadly pandering to those Nationalists who have in some cases been way too spoiled over the years.

What we need instead is a greening of both of the main parties policies. For them both to become political parties the middle of the road voters actually want to vote for. For them both to come out clearly and strongly and say that hunting in the numbers we do is not sustainable. For reds and blues to come together and admit we cannot go on building as we are, making Malta ugly for tourists, ugly for us as well as dirty and polluted.

I admire the bravado of the Nationalist Party in the way it dealt with the Monti hawkers but then they were a pretty small and easy group to deal with weren’t they? Besides that, it was clear that this was above all Austin Gatt’s mission, and Austin, who has behaved like a Deputy PM from day one, was clearly going to make it happen because it was better for his beloved Valletta.

In fact the Talking Point he wrote recently in The Times about Valletta was the only one I could bear to read from beginning to end. You just couldn’t doubt his sincerity and passion when handling the subject of his home town. If only he and some other key Nationalists would show the same empathy for other people’s passions about towns in the north like Sliema, Mellieha, Lija et al which are fighting off over development and not succeeding, largely because the government is not being strong enough to protect those parts of northern Malta which are our gems, those parts of Malta which, incidentally, were Nationalist strongholds. If only the PN listened or would listen as carefully to what residents are saying in Sliema, in Swieqi, in San Pawl Tat-Targa, in Mosta they might not be in the difficulty they are in today.

Jigsaw politics also implies jigsaw policies, strong with the weak and weak with the strong. The same determination that got the Monti moving is not applied to the awful Third World scene that makes the entrance to our (can it be true?) world heritage site which we call Valletta? The same determination is not applied to buses and trucks associated with the building trade that are still spewing out all manner of filth. The same determination is not applied to those who totally contravene building permits, while ordinary law abiding citizens and architects who play by the rules are made to sweat uncomfortably to obtain the simplest, most uncontentious of permits?

So we feel disconnected because the country feels like a jigsaw that has not been put together properly, that has not gelled. Parts of it have and parts of it are beautiful. The area around Castille for example with the newly restored Barrakka gardens and all else done there, is one of the few areas of Malta that looks entirely good. Otherwise the island looks like a giant quarry, and we the poor residents choking in its dust bowl.

Parliament was an important element which felt close to the people. Today it is another part of the jigsaw that is drifting away and fast. Our institutions, our courts, they all feel like separate pieces of a jigsaw. This is a tiny country which will not gel despite all the efforts of many who do work very hard. We are divided along too many lines to be one country. We are divided by education. We are divided by colour. We are divided by religion. We are divided by our liberal attitudes. We are divided by our bullying. We are divided by our culture.

We are a jigsaw that is coming apart at our edges, that is refusing to fit with other parts of the jigsaw we should fit in? Each group is only talking to each other. Nobody is listening to one another. We are not actually functioning as one nation and the votes by the next election will show that we are now at least two separate Malta’s if not three or four? Jigsaw policies has led to jigsaw politics, and it will take another generation to see the error of our ways and fix the rot.

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